and an earlier era, to
the high walls where the fire cast long shafts of ruddy light and long
tongues of shadow upon Asshlin's ancestors, painted in garments of silk
and lace that had once found a setting in this same sombre room. There
was something strangely analogous in these dead men and women and their
living representatives. The thought recurred to him again and again, as
he yielded to the pleasant influences of good wine and wholesome food
pressed upon him with unceasing hospitality. It was not the first time
he had pandered to his taste for past things by comparing a man with
his forefathers, but the result had never proved quite so profitable.
In their uncommon setting, Asshlin and his children would have appealed
to the most unobservant as uncommon types; viewed by the eyes of a
student, they became something more; they became types of an uncommon
race--of an uncommon class.

With the spur of the old fascination and the goad of the new-born
misgiving, he glanced again and yet again from his host's hard,
handsome features to the pictures, from the pictures to the
warm-coloured faces of the children. The study was absorbing. It
supplied him with an agreeable undercurrent of interest while the ham
and turkey were removed, and Asshlin, with much dexterity, distributed
portions of an immense apple-pie, deluged in cream; it still occupied
his mind when--cheese having been placed upon the table and partaken
of--Burke proceeded to remove the cloth.

At the moment that the polished surface of the table was laid bare, his
glance, temporarily distracted from its study of the nearer pictures,
was attracted and arrested by one portrait, that hung in partial shadow
above the carved chimneypiece. It was the picture of a tall, slight boy
of sixteen or seventeen years, dressed in the black satin knee
breeches, the diamond shoe buckles, and powdered queue of a past
generation.

Something in the pose of this painted figure, something in the youthful
face, caught and held his attention. In unconscious scrutiny, he leant
forward to study the shadowed features; then Asshlin, suddenly aware of
his interest, leant across the table.

"That was what I meant, James, by saying one of them should have been a
boy," he said sharply. "Haven't I justification?"

He nodded half earnestly, half in malicious humour towards the picture
above the fire.

For a moment Milbanke was at a loss; then all at once he comprehended
his host's meani